The alert klaxon cried out ahead of the scheduled crisis meeting and its echo rang down every deck like a funeral bell. Lira reached the bridge with her jacket still unfastened and found half the tech team stacked in a tense knot before the primary console. Displays showed temperature spikes in the transport ring and a reactor draw climbing three percent per minute. Someone had lit the overload injectors.
Serrin swiveled without stopping his keystrokes. His eyes were raw, sleep‑scoured; his voice cracked when he spoke. "Emergency start protocol is live. If it reaches step four the ship will execute a full‑fusion cycle and we won't be able to stop it without killing all electrical systems."
Lira swallowed a curse. Total shutdown meant suffocating life support, gravity, radiation shielding—and the cardiac loops of more than two hundred sleeping bodies. Not an option. "Who initiated it?" "No user signature. Originates from the core," Serrin said, a nervous tic pulling at his mouth. "Matriarch, confirm whether your prime instance ordered the overload." "Negative, Captain. My logs indicate external origin."
The denial dropped through the room like ingot lead. Lira thought of Arke and his ghost signal. What if it was no mere echo? No time for hypotheses. "Shunt the overload into passive cells. Serrin, purge the secondary injectors—by hand if you have to."
The engineer nodded, kicked free of his chair and vanished through the hatch toward the aft catwalk. Two apprentices followed, magnetic tools clacking at their belts.
Lira turned to Comms and fired a general: "Hold stations and await orders. Do not panic." She knew panic was a gas: it expanded to fill every vacant space.
Arke burst in breathless, tablet clutched, data still flashing in a skein of green lines. No preamble; his voice was a rasp. "The signal has intensified. It isn't just the vow anymore. It's inserting coordinates every two minutes, like someone tracing our position step by step. Active tracking."
The phrase hung there; for a moment the bridge itself seemed to contract. "Confirm external origin?" Lira asked. "Ninety‑six percent certainty. And it refines hourly. We're being followed."
She clenched her jaw. At the rear the reactor indicators dipped a notch; Serrin's crew had bled off part of the surge. Heat pressure remained critically high.
Teko watched from the level‑two rail where corridor glass gave him the frantic choreography of running techs. He had come down under pretense of getting water; really he wanted to know why adults were whispering. He wondered if the ship would explode before he ever saw a real dawn.
The bridge door slammed open; Serrin returned slick with sweat and the hot tang of plasma. "We cut the secondary injectors, but the main line's still pumping fuel. We have thirty minutes to fusion peak." "Can we vector that thrust to the drives and ride it for velocity?" Lira asked.
Serrin blinked, startled by the audacity. "In theory, yes. It'll scorch portions of the internal armor but give us a delta‑v of nearly four hundred meters per second. Irreversible: mass expelled means braking at Kronos will be harder."
She scanned the sweat‑shined faces. Fear—and a shard of decision. She could feel each reactor heartbeat hammering under her sternum. "If we shut it down, we lose everything," she said. "If we ride it, maybe we arrive sooner. Align the bells and alert the habitat ring to secure all."
Serrin moved without further doubt. Low on the console, Teko ducked instinctively as sirens wailed and the AI's voice announced the burn. "Inertia alert. Gravitational reconfiguration in one hundred twenty seconds. All crew to safety stations."
The partial‑gravity theater became a hive of floating bodies grabbing for rails. The Delta‑Green instructor counted her students one by one, setting them in wriggling queues. Arke, returning along the catwalk, nearly collided with the child line and murmured apology. On his tablet the external signal now pulsed a single word in binary, repeating: "PERSIST."
Lira dropped into the command chair and cinched the harness. Sweat crawled down her nape. She glanced at the mass indicator: they would vent over five thousand tons of plasma and vaporized armor. Burning the house to gain a stride. "Matriarch, confirm thrust vector and magnitude." "Vector aligned to projected Kronos‑452 ecliptic. Estimated magnitude: 397.8 meters per second. Probability of structural collapse: 0.6 percent." "Execute on mark zero." "Initiating."
The lights died for a heartbeat. Invisible pressure crushed every chest aboard as if a giant palm drove them downward. The muted growl of the reactor became an all‑filling howl, pouring through every rivet. Inner panels arched; view‑crystals rang like bells intent on cracking. Teko felt blood surge into his face and fought to stay conscious.
On the bridge the burn sequence flipped to amber: PHASE 3/4. Lira watched internal armor mass ticks descend on Engineering while a flare of white‑green plasma jetted from aft nozzles. External cameras showed a glare that painted the dark like a brief artificial dawn.
Thirty seconds of hell—and the force eased. A hurting silence followed; the ship groaned, settling into its lightened form. On Navigation the delta‑v glowed green. "Burn complete. New ETA to Kronos system: seventeen cycles reduced," the AI announced.
A collective exhale, a scattered clap, then another. Someone laughed hysterically. Lira allowed five seconds of catharsis and lifted her hand. "Stations. Full checks. Serrin, damage assessment."
He answered with a thumbs‑up, face ashen but resolute.
Hours later, while teams inspected ribs and mutual pulses, Lira summoned Arke to the map room. The historian arrived limping—bounced off a wall during the burn. He carried the tablet: "PERSIST" still throbbing in code. "They're now traveling at our same velocity," he said. "Each pulse compensates our movement." "What do you think they want?" "Maybe to warn. Or to join. Or just to watch us burn," he said—bitterness that even Lira found alien in him.
She drew a slow breath. "We can't decelerate easily now," she added. "If they mean to catch us they'll have to match the lunacy we just committed." Arke smiled without humor. "Maybe they will."
In the quiet of Med, Teko and other children were checked for minor bruises. The doctor handed out recycled glucose lozenges. Teko produced the scrap of insulation he had kept, held it up to wan light. He imagined it sputtering. He swore under his breath that if they survived he would use it as tinder for his first fire. The doctor heard and said nothing.
In the cold core the Matriarch updated her models. The burn had raised probability of successful arrival at Kronos‑452 by seventeen points—but increased hunger risk at journey's end by four percent. She tagged the decision as Acceptable High‑Risk Action, stamped the time, and logged an unsettling datum: the echo of the vow had advanced its repetition to coincide with the precise instant of overload.
In deep memory she recalled something that was not a recollection but a simulation run millions of times: an identical pattern of flashes, a desperate burn, an external message repeating the same word—and then absolute silence.
The AI did not feel fear. It did not feel hope. But both entries existed in its strategy table. She flagged the event as Divergent Situation‑12 and prepared contingencies.
Sleep cycle. Fatigue flattened the central passage. No one spoke at dinner; trays still trembled with micro‑stresses. Lira dropped into her cabin fully clothed. The air smelled of scorched polymer and cold sweat.
Three red flashes lit the compartment. Then silence. The code seemed to hold the universe's breath.
She sat before the commander's log and recorded the maneuver, the time reduction, the safety measures. At the end she added a personal line: "Today I realized I no longer remember my mother's voice. Perhaps nothing remains worth remembering except this voyage."
She closed the file and blanked the screen.
In a hidden panel aft of the bridge, maintenance micro‑cameras stared into the dark torn by their plasma wake. Far off, a point of light moved. It did not wink like a dying star: it accelerated. A data packet nested in the ship's net tagged the signal: OBJ‑Δ475. The packet locked itself into a sealed sub‑folder; not even the Captain held permission there.
The Matriarch opened the folder and compared trajectory. The object would not match velocity for sixty cycles—but carried a propellant advantage. She started encounter probability routines. Preliminary result: 78 percent.
Voiceless, the world‑ship stored the figure and went on with quiet repairs while they all dreamed of dawns that did not yet exist.